Letter from Wales: Revealed: Scale of extra spending on pupils in Welsh vs English medium schools

by Julian Ruck

Those of a more zealous inclination in Welsh language quarters, have questioned the veracity of my statements here on Uncut, in respect of the Welsh Labour government’s funding of Welsh mediums schools in the principality.

Indeed, I am frequently called a liar.

The Welsh Language Society and indeed the intentions of Plaid Cymru to create a Welsh speaking bucolic Taffy Caliphate are well known, but I draw readers of Uncut to data collated under a FoI request in June last year (see below).

It seems the Welsh Labour government is also in the pot (although no surprises here, it is a consummate expert when it comes to nationalist social engineering at taxpayers’ expense!).

Spending per pupil in Welsh and English medium schools

The differences in funding per pupil in Welsh medium schools (for those outside of the principality, these are schools where Welsh is the language used in school) and English medium schools demands scrutiny to put it mildly, particularly when one considers that only 15% of Welsh speakers in Wales can read and write the language, and its hugely expensive promotion (billions) has failed miserably (note Census data).

Minority views should always be respected and where possible accommodated. However, they should not be allowed to dictate to and rule the democratically elected majority. In Wales, the vociferous Welsh speaking nationalist minority is given far too much sway. Their sordid and often vicious attempts to silence and threaten anyone who exercises the temerity to challenge them should no longer be tolerated.

The data shows how Welsh Labour displays nothing but contempt for the English speaking majority in Wales, a calculated agenda of discrimination and a sly Crachach conspiracy to annihilate any kind of equal opportunity. It is nothing less than an absolute disgrace and a bitter taste of what will happen to Welsh education if Welsh Labour are given any more powers or worse, hop into bed with Potty Plaid – again.

The Estyn schools report published this week, slated Welsh education and this is on top of the PISA conclusions at the end of last year ranking Wales 46th in the EU for literacy and numeracy. Could this have something to do with Carwyn’s undemocratic Welsh speaking agenda I wonder, he is a Welsh speaker after all, just like the rest of the Crachach?

For years now, the Welsh language diehards have been crowing about how superior and better performing (???) Welsh medium schools are when compared to their English medium counterparts. Well, one doesn’t need to be an astro-physicist to understand why?

Take Bridgend: Nearly £3000, I repeat £3000, more per pupil is spent in the Welsh medium than the English medium – this no doubt has everything to do with the fact that Bridgend is largely English speaking, and what about Anglesey (a hotbed of Potty Plaid nationalist intent), Gwynedd and Conway?

Equal opportunity? Please. It’s no wonder there is a mass exodus of Welsh students are taking off to English universities (and taking the taxpayers’ £5000 with them), that’s if they can obtain the grades to get there in the first place.

Preserving the Welsh language is an admirable objective in itself, but exercising such blatant and prejudicial ways of doing it would force even Machiavelli to think again.

But worse even than this, the education policies of Carwyn and his Team Druid are destroying the futures of Welsh youth and reducing Wales to an irrelevance that would shame a disillusioned pretender to the House of Windsor.

Finally, and with the greatest of respect Ed, Welsh Labour is bringing the party into disrepute on an industrial scale.

It is everything a modern and vote winning Labour party should eschew.

Julian Ruck is an author, journalist and columnist. He also makes contributions to both Welsh and national broadcasting and media

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51 Responses to “Letter from Wales: Revealed: Scale of extra spending on pupils in Welsh vs English medium schools”

This is nonsense: first of all, it also shows that in many areas more is spent on English schools, and Ruck fails to mention the salient fact that in some mostly English-speaking areas there is only 1 Welsh-medium school and that the spending includes the cost of getting pupils to and from school. It stands to reason that where there is only 1 WM school it will cost more to ferry pupils there and back.
The fact is that the actual cost of teaching and maintaining – teachers’ pay, facilities, etc – is the same.
Amazing misuse and misunderstanding of data.
Can Julian tell us (when he’s come clean about submitting rotten novels to Welsh publishers), what the actual spending on teaching and facilities are, comparatively speaking?

“The Welsh Language Society and indeed the intentions of Plaid Cymru to create a Welsh speaking bucolic Taffy Caliphate are well known,”

Seriously. “Taffy Caliphate”???? When using divisive mockery as a polemic tool, it’s no wonder that you aren’t taken as seriously as you would like to be.

“The differences in funding per pupil in Welsh medium schools (for those outside of the principality* these are schools where Welsh is the language used in school) and English medium schools demands scrutiny to put it mildly, particularly when one considers that only 15% of Welsh speakers in Wales can read and write the language, and its hugely expensive promotion (billions) has failed miserably

(*Point of order. Wales hasn’t been a Principality since 1536. The The Berwick and Wales Act of 1746 was repealed in 1967, and since then the country we live in has been known as “England and Wales”.)

It is important, as you say, to properly scrutinise when analysing statistical data that shows spending per pupil. It appears however that you have done no such thing. While in many cases here the cost of Welsh Medium (WM) education may be higher per pupil, in a number of these areas there are far fewer WM schools than English Medium (EM) schools, so the overall cost will be less to the Local Education Authority (LEA).

Point of Order: You must learn to differentiate between “Welsh-speaking” and “Nationalist”. They do not go hand in hand.

“Their sordid and often vicious attempts to silence and threaten anyone who exercises the temerity to challenge them should no longer be tolerated.”

Neither should such aggressive accusations with not a shred of proof.

The data shows how Welsh Labour displays nothing but contempt for the English speaking majority in Wales, a calculated agenda of discrimination and a sly Crachach conspiracy to annihilate any kind of equal opportunity.

1. The Data shows how Welsh Labour is responding to the demand for Welsh education. The vast majority of parents who send their children to WM schools in the south east of the country (that being the most populous part) are indeed in this English-speaking majority. That is not contempt – it is giving the electorate what they voted for, under successive manifestos for the Welsh Assembly elections.

“Could this have something to do with Carwyn’s undemocratic Welsh speaking agenda I wonder, he is a Welsh speaker after all, just like the rest of the Crachach?”

Considering that the majority of kids go to EM schools, I would guess this has nothing to do with Carwyn’s ability to speak Welsh. As to your supposition of this being an undemocratic agenda, please see also earlier point re manifesto.

“Take Bridgend: Nearly £3000, I repeat £3000, more per pupil is spent in the Welsh medium than the English medium – this no doubt has everything to do with the fact that Bridgend is largely English speaking, and what about Anglesey (a hotbed of Potty Plaid nationalist intent), Gwynedd and Conway?”

Of the 22 local authorities, it is cheaper to educate in Welsh Medium Education in 10 of them. English is cheaper in the other 12, although the difference in Pembrokeshire is £1 per pupil, which is hardly massive (especially when you consider that the dearth of WM schools there means that transport costs per pupil will be much higher.) Please see also earlier point re overall cost.

So how come WM education is more expensive? One reason which you fail to mention is how Welsh schools are set up. Take Ysgol Bro Edern, which opened in September 2012 in North Cardiff. Ysgol Bro Edern was meant to open on the site of St Teilo’s High School in order to meet the demand for WM education in the city. However, to bring the old building up to date, pupils at Bro Edern had to share facilities with Ysgol Glantaf for that first year, while being taught in temporary accommodation (that is, portakabins) on Glantaf’s school playing fields. Pupils were bussed in while their school was being built.

The pattern is repeated everywhere, as demand continues for WM education. Where WM education needs to be met, WM schools typically take over older EM schools where pupil numbers are falling (LEAs tend to merge schools with surplus places). Generally speaking, improvements need to be made for these new WM schools to meet the prospected number of pupils, which within a short time will be more than the previous EM school it replaced. Can you not see why the spending ‘per pupil’ would be higher?

What is more amazing than your crude analysis is the differences in how much is spent per LEA. In Anglesey, for instance, £3005 is spent per pupil in English Medium Education; in Neath Port Talbot it is £4127, a difference of £1222 per pupil. Indeed, as Jenny Randerson of the Lib Dems pointed out a few years ago, it is a lottery as to how much money is spent on education in Wales. Instead of attacking WM education it would be far better to statistically analyse the spending per pupil in each LEA and to try and figure out why the spending is so different. Perhaps a national plan of action could be made to try and improve Education in Wales as a whole.

Julian, please provide a breakdown of the costs and where they come from, and address the points made by Mr Morais. Also please answer the conflict of interest question about your own failed submissions to taxpayer-funded Welsh publishers.
Not a big ask is it, surely, to make to a fearless truth-campaigner such as yourself?
I can help with some facts on the second point, but let’s see if you can shoot my fox…

I don’t think julian is capable of answering joao’s points in an intelligent and considered way. He has demonstrated many times on this site that he is uncapable of having a meaningful discussion about any subject.

All FoI requests to the Welsh Government are logged, and the results are made available for everybody to see. If Mr Ruck had obtained these figures under an FoI request in June 2013, then a record of it would be on this page:

Interesting evidence Mr Smart – has Mr Ruck been lying about FOI requests?
Again Julian Ruck: answer the questions that have been posed, and give us a breakdown of your costs and your sources.
You’ve now been caught lying several times on this site alone.

Mr Origami, you are a lunatic: look up the word ‘apartheid’, check its history and what it means in real places to real people, remember you are writing your bilge little more than a month after the death of Nelson Mandela, and then apologise for your vicious, nasty-minded paranoid comments.
Shame on prats like you.

Here is your good self using multiple identities to castigate someone on amazon for giving your self-published book a bad review. You can tell it’s Ruck as he’s a frequent user of the phrase ‘you are to be pitied’. I have also found out that he has written several 5 star reviews of himself on Amazon. More on that soon.

Initial post: 14 Dec 2012 15:09:18 GMT
Julian Ruck says:
More dirty tricks by you in the Welsh ‘literati’ I note. This really is all you have, isn’t it? Anonymous malice and vindictiveness. Your ‘comment’ makes no reference to plot or content, you haven’t even read TBB. Readers are not stupid you know.
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Posted on 14 Dec 2012 15:33:56 GMT
Virgil says:
How very sad, you people are. Mr Ruck exposes the tax-payer gravy train, you have all been on for years and all you can do is insult and abuse.
You are to be pitied.
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Posted on 14 Dec 2012 15:40:29 GMT
Bookworm says:
People like you, make me ashamed of being Welsh. Clearly you haven’t read Mr Ruck’s book, which is extremely well written, funny and dramatic, as indeed are all his other novels.

No doubt, you are just another State subsidised failed Welsh writer, with nothing better to do than smear Mr Ruck at every opportunity.
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I’m sorry, I can’t resist this: all three of the above Amazon review comments are by Julian Ruck, two of them masquerading as other people, defending Julian Ruck, and one by Ruckie himself defending himself.
So labour Uncut is content to give platform not only to a plagiarist and liar but to someone who uses multiple identities to attack people and tell porkies about his so-called writing?
Not only a liar but an impersonator of others on legitimate marketing and information sites.

Julian, it doesn’t detract from the fact that you serve no purpose to Wales and are of no discernable use. Please leave the country. You disgrace it by your presence. That idiot Jaques Prolic or whatever his name is is about the only person of less worth I can think of.

I can quite proudly say I wouldn’t piss on you if you were in a gutter burning – although I would stop to tweet pictures and impede any ambulance that may stop out of curiosity.

You will I assume, have noted the informed and educated tenet of most commentators where other articles are concerned.

You are an extremely small but fanatical group of unpleasant individuals, who merely bring the majority of right thinking and decent Welsh folk into disrepute and make Wales a national joke and the butt of enduring derision.

You appear to be a trifle exercised by my statement: ‘Their sordid and often vicious attempts to silence and threaten anyone who exercises the temerity to challenge them…….’

Well now, readers of Uncut would do well to note that you were one of the main protagonists in trying to sabotage a public talk of mine in Cardiff a year last December. A master heckler I seem to remember and sly photo snapper.

Betsan Powys, who was filming the talk and had previously interviewed me for BBC’s Sunday politics, left the room in disgust at your behaviour.

May I also remind you, of the threats, revenge reviews on Amazon, malicious entries on the Julian Ruck Wiki page, fake blogs and Twitter accounts in my name, police investigations, and of course not to mention the ample evidence for all to read here on Uncut and all over the internet.

Good luck with the thesis.

JR

PS And you really should choose your friends more carefully. These days in the real world, prospective employer’s check out the social media profiles of their applicants.

I’m slightly puzzled by all this. Even if Julian Ruck were not a documented liar and plagiarist, would Labour Uncut really publish such puerile and bigoted language in articles about Scotland or indeed anywhere else? I mean, calling people taffies and druids, mocking their language and dialects and generally laughing at a whole country in article after articles?
Let’s try it out: for ‘taffy caliphate’ let’s have ‘jock chieftanship’, or , from your French correspondent ‘Froggie regime’ or somesuch?
I doubt it.
hy does Wales and Welsh issues deserve a semi-literate bigoted charlatan writing about it?

Until you bully boys actually persuade the electorate in Wales to hold a referendum on independence and then persuade them to vote yes for independence, people in Wales have a right to put forward their views for promoting a British agenda in Wales.

The absence of any contradiction from any serious member of the Welsh community (political or otherwise) rather says it all, don’t you think?

Further, I would remind you that my questions relating to these matters and the FofI data were confirmed at a press briefing at the Senate last Tuesday. No doubt both Adrian Masters and Vaughan Roderick (journos at BBC Wales) will confirm said confirmation.

Anonymous commentators such as your good self, can hardly be considered as authoritative or indeed having an opinion that is remotely credible.

“The absence of any contradiction from any serious member of the Welsh community (political or otherwise) rather says it all, don’t you think?”

Julian, this is ridiculous: you’ve been contradicted on your facts, your bigotry, your lies, your plagiarism and your fake self-reviews on amazon, as well as your deceit about submitting your novels to Welsh publishers and your threats to said publishers if they reveal your spiteful replies to their rejections to the public. You simply refuse to engage with these challenges because you are a liar and evader of questions.

The fact that you avoid doing so does not mean you are not being engaged with at every single level of your shoddy so-called ‘writing’.

ISO – International Organization for Standardization. Recognised by the UN, to which the UK is a signatory. Whether you like it or not, Wales is a country. It has the right to pass Primary legislation and that is shortly to be increased further. Wales has been a country in UK affairs since 1999 and appointment of it’s own First Minister (following the ’97 referendum and the 1998 Government of Wales Act) however it has only just been internationally recognised as such. It is also referred to as a country by Westminster and recognised as a country in sporting organisations and the EU.

Julian, your response to Joao Morais is laughable at best. Firstly, you couldn’t be bothered to take the time to spell his name properly. Secondly, you do not address anything mentioned in his above comment.

I was at the talk you mentioned. Again, it was laughable. Betsan Powys left because you were talking balls, not because of heckling. She decided it was not worth covering and you were a bit of an idiot. You wrote a blog post saying how great your talk was, but promptly took it down.

You mention your wikipedia page? You’ve not got one! It was decided you weren’t of note, and it got deleted by they’re moderators. Including one of their most prominent ones, who lives in California apparently. You haven’t got a page because your a self published, awful author, and lying plagiarist.

Here’s your wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Ruck

The ‘fake blog’ you talk of seems pretty real to me. As it goes, I thought Julian Ruck was a forgery of Julian Fuck until I’d read it for approximately 5 seconds. A bit of literary critique, but not something he takes kindly too…http://jewelsfromjulian.wordpress.com

That incident is made more laughable by the use of the word prominent to describe you. Should read ‘local Spar agitator’.

I wouldn’t try character assassination when yours is so dubious julian. Can you answer Joao’s point in his previous comment? Can you also explain that you dislike Welsh publishers because they’ve rejected you, many a time, because your writing is so bad?

Julian is, as usual, lying through his teeth. Here are a couple of easy-to-check examples to prove he’s wrong.

There are only two Welsh-medium primary schools in Monmouthshire. Ysgol Y Ffin has a budget of £3,721 per pupil, Ysgol Y Fenni has a budget of £3,466 per pupil. Both these figures are lower, not higher, than the figure of £3,822 Julian gives for English-medium schools. So instead of Monmouthshire spending £401 more per pupil on WM schools than EM schools, as Julian claims, they actually receive something like £200 less.

There is only one EM primary school in Gwynedd, Ysgol Ein Harglwyddes. It has a budget of £3,749 per pupil. This makes it more expensive than the figure of £3,639 he gives for WM primary schools. So instead of Gwynedd spending £552 more per pupil on WM schools than EM schools, as Julian claims, they actually receive over £100 less.

OH dear me Julian… have your been putting up false data and extrapolating crap deductions from it by accident or from deceit?
Labour UNcut – check your sources, for goodness sake, and check the reputations and track records of your writers. This is shaming you.

I repeat, the data comes from the Welsh government, not me. I therefore advise that you direct your frustrations at the Senate.

I have every confidence that your next ploy will be to claim that both Estyn and PISA are lying too and that Welsh medium schools inundate Oxford, Yale and the Sorbonne with Welsh speaking undergraduates?

There are two clear issues here that you need to address, and if you were a serious journalist you would do so immediately.

1) That the figures you have quoted are inaccurate (see Mia’s post at 3.03pm). Related to this is how you obtained them (B Smart’s comments are relevant here). Assuming a FOI request even took place, it still seems likely that the spreadsheet in your post was compiled by you from data you received, and people understandably have little faith in you having a command of statistics.

2) That the figures you have quoted (if correct) have been taken out of context, removed of nuance, and used in service of an overly-simplistic argument. The first two comments, from James and Joao Morais, address this. You should have addressed these points already but you haven’t, and the casual observer is left with the inevitable impression that you can’t.

There are a number of other issues raised in the comment thread – publishers, plagiarism, etc – that are not directly relevant, but a response would be welcome. However, given the crack you made about multiple identities, Dave Rodway’s accusations are on topic, and you would do well to address them. In a similar vein, did you write this review of your own work: http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2HEDHDJ3FN9YO/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0955265800&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag= I ask for two reasons: because it reads like you; and because you’ve admitted editing your former wikipedia article, for which the primary editor was known as Bagehot1.

Since Julian is obviously in a mood to respond, would it be too much to ask that he respond to the questions about his data – source, breakdown, etc – as well as to pretty shocking allegations of self-reviewing on amazon? He can deal with the plagiarism and book-rejection issues after that.

Julian is in fact Bagehot1 and also Virgil on his amazon reviews. You can tell this by the inept use of punctuation and the use of key Ruckisms such as ‘you are to be pitied’ etc.

Why is Julian Ruck not addressing what are pretty serious allegations: lying about data, misunderstanding statistics, faking web identities to big up his own books and lying about being rejected by publishers and about threatening them if they reveal his deceit?
Can this site’s editor improve his and its credibility by persuading Ruck to address these issues?

But the thing is, if you were a proper journalist with facts at your fingertips, you *would* answer these questions, and you would do so without prompting. You would say “Yes, B Smart, here’s the FOI reference number – check it out.” You would say “Thank you, Mia, but here are the raw figures I received, and here’s how I calculated my spreadsheet.” You would say “You’re wrong, Mr Morais, and here’s why.” You would say “No, Mr Mosby, I’ve never reviewed my own books, so you could never prove it.”

You would say all those things eagerly if you could. Any serious journalist who had confidence in their article and a desire to defend the points it raised would be falling over themselves to do something so important, so easy.

But you don’t. Honestly, it may well be that the issues you raise are significant. If so, they deserve a more competent correspondent. Which is to say: anyone.

Hilarious. He accuses people of using multiple online identities, then signs off Virgil’s review with Julian Ruck! He’s not used to to the internet and its not cool to review your own work!http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RDS9DOLI7YFVU
Virgil says:
Another Welsh language nationalist revenge review?

You have patently not read the novel.

Keep trying.

Julian Ruck

Julian really has it in for Welsh speakers. Can you address your use of figures and answer the above questions? Character assassination can go on with you all day.

Hopefully dave rodway. The tragedy of Julian’s total lack of talent and ability, his complete lack of insight, must go on. I’ve never known a ‘journalist’ get so much wrong in a ‘career’ as this man can in a few months.
Julian, you need to grow out of the school playground mindset, if someone beats you in a race, don’t sulk, train harder. Answer your critics. Or, in language you understand, answer your critics, I dare you?
All this column demonstrates is how out of touch LU are with Wales if this is actually their choice of correspondent. Poor show, dear chaps.

There’s something profoundly nasty about claiming that everyone who thinks your writing is bad must be a Welsh-speaker – it’s part of the bigot’s arsenal of making out that minority cultures are the problem.
As anyone can tell, those who feel most offended by Julian’s appalling literacy are those who love and care about the English language.
Because let’s face it, with Julian using it and self-publishing through it, English will soon be on life support, begging us to switch it off.

This site is fast becoming a laughing stock, due to the continual use of Julian Ruck as ‘the voice of Wales’. I have no issue with the Welsh establishment being challenged in either language, but surely you can find someone a little more respected than him to do it. Being constantly bitter and twisted is not I suggest, the best basis for good journalism.